The market has been rallying and is now up around 9,500. I expect it to climb to 10,500-11,000 before resuming it's decent. By early next year, I expect to be below 7,000.

The recent sell-off was overdone and was sparked primarily from one event (the failure of Lehman), but there is no reason to expect that things are going to be looking better anytime soon.

On the political front, Obama will win easily, but a bigger question is how many seats the Democrats will pick up in Congress. I'm going to guess 58 seats in the Senate, but 60 is the magic number to prevent a Republican filibuster.

The bond fund has kind of settled in around $5.07. I'm hoping for a rally so I can get out once and for all. An Obama presidency should be good for tax-frees! Likewise, I'm hoping for the current market rally to continue so I can get out of the ...

The DOW is crashing again today. It will probably end up at around 8300. In the past week, my muni bond fund bounced back from a low of 4.83 and is now at 5.09.

Everything points to deflation over the next 6 months, but then??? The government is printing money as fast as it can to borrow us out of this mess. The likely (and intended) result will be inflation. The easiest way to buy yourself out of debt is to make the debt [relatively] less. The challenge is going to be figuring the best time to go from cash - and long term bonds - into hedges against inflation. (property, stocks, commodities) As they are the very things that are crashing right now,  the timing is going to be difficult.

My first step is to get out of the long term bonds. I'm thinking definitely within the next 3 months.

The DOW is below 10K for the first time since 2004. While I think it ultimately might settle in around 7K, that could take a year or so. In the near term, the panic phase will probably subside and we'll see some sort of rebound.

Houses in OC hit a high of around $630K in late 2007. They're currently at about $450K, and I expect them to go to $300K before we see a turnaround.

My MCFTX hit a low of $5.23/share last Thursday. The flood of high quality assets seeking cash is playing havoc with otherwise conservative investments. The recent crash was initiated by the bankruptcy of Lehman. Things seems to have turned a corner and I'm hoping for a bounce back up to around $5.60.

On a positive note, yields in tax free muni money markets are though the roof as nobody is interested in tying up short term money. The tax free yield is up to almost 5% fro ...

Well, it happened sooner than I thought. Stocks around the world shot up Monday as fears of mortgage defaults on US held securities diminished. The US markets have been more cautious, but (with the exception of FNM and FRE) financials and home builders are up sharply.

It's all kind of ridiculous short-term trading as unquestionably this is bad news for economy as a whole and the housing market specifically. Are people really excited about the government running the mortgage industry? As Jim Rogers, CEO of Rogers Holdings, told CNBC Europe on Monday, the U.S. is "more communist than China right now".

I'm re-reading John Talbott's 2003 book "The Coming Crash in the Housing Market". Since his predictions were spot on, I'm particularly interested in his assessment of mortgage giants Fannie and Freddie. My fear is that they ultimately will have to be nationalized and the ensuing debt taken on by the government will ultimately lower the government's credit rating... lowering the value of outstanding bills and bonds and hastening the United States descent into the number 2 spot in global power.

On Monday I moved most of my remaining money from WAMU into Wells Fargo so I can begin the long, painful process of setting up and transferring all the bill pay, auto debit, etc.  
IndyMac bank (founded by Mozilo) failed on Friday. It will prove the costliest bank failure in US history, approach ...

The market was up over 400 points (to 12,150) the other day after the Feds announcement to pump $200 billion into credit pipeline. I think they're running out of ways to juice the economy. The rebates are coming, the next interest rate cut could be the last and I don't know how often they can throw good money after bad.

Now if I can just figure out a way to beat the ensuing inflation...

It was only a year ago that Bernanke was criticizing Greenspan for all his interest rate cuts. Last weeks 'emergency' 75 basis point cut and today's 50 points add up to one of the most aggressive rate cuts in history. Specifically, Bernanke was saying it was a clumsy way to manage things and he favored more subtle approaches. Apparently he's changed his tune. No doubt he inherited a mess, but he's equally guilty in sharing Greenspan's need for Wall Street's approval.

What I've learned:
You can't time the market. I unloaded my last funds the Friday before the emergency rate cut. If that hadn't happened on Tuesday (Monday was MLK Day), the markets would have tanked 100s of point (following 10% declines in Asian markets)

The Future
People will slowly start to realize that the only reason that the Fed has taken such drastic measure is that things are really looking bad. Certa ...

The market's tanking. We're at 12,600 and nerves are rattled. BofA is buying Countrywide for $4.1 billion, but the market isn't happy as it's less than the stock was trading for yesterday.

My prediction is that the market will be volitile, but will break 13K at some point in the not too distant future at which point I'll unload my last mutual fund. This year, the carnage will continue. BofA's purchase will be a disaster as they're taking on 1+ trillion (!!!) in loans serviced by Countrywide and sending their slimy CEO off with a $100+ million parachute. If I had to guess as to how low the market will go, I would say 8K. Recession is a foregone conclusion with the mortgage / subprime mess excacerbated locally by Hollywood's strike, and (most recently) California's proposed budget cuts.

I'm in the process of consolidating all my accounts by getting out of Etrade and WAMU (both companies which might be in bankruptcy soon) and into a brokerage account at ? where I ...